Sweetening spells are employed in
hoodoo and many other types of
worldwide folk magic when you want someone to be sweet to you,
that is --

to favour you, like you, hire you,
love you, marry you, stay with you, return to you, reconcile with you,
give you a written recommendation, give testimony in your favour,
decide a legal issue in your favour over another,
make a generous financial settlement in your favour,
favour your family members over the members of other families,
give you a raise, give you time off, give you paid leave, speak kindly to you
at a family gathering, treat you kindly in public, stop talking
behind you, cease from anger against you, cease from all wrath,
cease from verbal abuse, cease from physical abuse,
and so forth.

The sweeteners used in these spells vary by historical era, region of the country, commercial
or home-made availability, family traditions, local traditions, and intuitive
decisions. Just in African American conjure
alone, without regard to other forms of folk magic found around the world --

-- all of these have been used, and are still used, in sweetening spells, either singly or mixed ith one another.

Sweetening spells have been and are still often worked inside containers --

boxes, bottles, canning jars, small food jars, hollowed red onions, cored red apples, covered sugar bowls,
under plants in pots, under the roots of plants in the ground, wrapped in tin foil, wrapped in
paper, within a layer of enrobing chocolate, in a wallet, in a purse, in a pocket, in a mojo hand, in the shoes

-- but, although sugar and honey spells are some of the oldest forms of
bottle spell
in the world, not all of them are worked in bottles or other containers;
in fact, they have been and still are often worked out loose --

on dinner plates, in tea or coffee cups, in open bowls, on saucers, in pie
tins, on cookie sheets, sprinkled on candles, sprinkled on altars, sprinkled in baths, sprinkled on
the floor or the ground

There are so many variations to sweetening spells that i call
the whole lot of them a "spell family." And just as in a
human family, not all of the members look exactly alike. You will see
resemblances that can be noted, and you will see differences as well.

Do not let anyone tell you that some variations are "valid" while others
are not. These spells are so ancient and so widespread that if you understand
the family resemblances, you will soon come to see that a touch of menstrual blood
on a fresh strawberry that has been dipped and covered with a hard chocolate coating is
not all that far from the name paper of a bankruptcy court judge that is kept in a
half-pint mason jar full of sugar cubes with a tea light on top or the business card of a boss that is folded inside a
piece of aluminum foil with a sprinkle of sugar and kept in a wallet or worn in a shoe. The petition is
for sweetness. The social form of sweetness desired, from whom it is desired, and how that desire is
worked into a physical spell to be conveyed to influence the minds and hearts of others
are the variables. But really, when you look at them, these spells are not so much
different as they are similar.

Modern folks have taken to calling the whole family of sweetener spells
"honey jar" and "sugar bowl" spells, placing an emphasis on the fact that many of them
are worked in closed containers (jars and bowls), but in the oldest
version of these spells that i know, there is actually no jar or bowl, just a
plain white tea cup saucer or coffee cup saucer in the center of which you burn a
candle on the person's name,
dressed with
hoodoo oils and
surrounded by a poured-out ring of pancake
syrup, honey, or molasses. This old-fashioned method has the disadvantage of eventually
drawing flies or ants,
but it is extremely easy to work on a short-term basis, say for one to three days. Be
careful, though, if the candle burns too hot, it may crack your saucer.

Another early version of the these sweetening spells is a container spell, but not
actually a bottle spell
as we think of them today. It employs a hollowed-out
red apple or red onion to hold honey, jam, or sugar, plus the name-paper of
the person on whom you are working.
The apple or onion may be shut up in a metal tin, such as a coffee or honey can, and a candle
burned on the tin's lid -- or it can be placed in the
bottom of a flower pot, with a plant grown on top of
it to hide the spell. The plant takes the place of
candle, but it radiates the intent of the spell just the same. It can be given as a
gift to the person on whom you are working, and can spread its sweetness throughout their home.

During the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, as packaged sugar, honey, syrup, and liquid sweeteners became available from grocery stores,
another variant of this spell was developed that
employed a one-pound box of sugar. You cut off the top of the box, put the name in, stick a candle in
the sugar, and burn it. After the candle is finished, you remove the remnant wax from the sugar and bury it.
The advantage to this method is that after you finish the spell, you can use the sugar in cooking, to sweeten the
person on whom you are working. The disadvantage is that you need to be careful not to catch the
chipboard box on fire -- a small, skinny candle will solve that problem.

A similar effect can be obtained by
working the spell in a sugar bowl, either with granular sugar or with sugar cubes. With this variation,
not only can you cook food for folks, but if you are working on family issues, for peace in the
home, they will feed THEMSELVES the sugar, every time they sweeten their coffee.

Jams and jellies are also used this way: you can stir some edible love herbs in when making
them at home, or you can pray over and prepare commercial jams or jellies in the same way
for use at the table in spells of domestic love. You can also take into cnsideration the
type of fruit from which the jam or jelly is made: rose petal and strawberry jam for sexual love,
orange marmalade for cleanliness and marriage, fig preserves for female fertility.

Because it is a common magical practice to combine or mix several ingredients together when making
a spell, the era of packaged sweeteners also brought us the idea of double- and-triple-strength
sweetening spells, made by pouring honey into sugar or mingling mollasses, honey, and sugar
together for estra "oomph." This sort of mixing is not necesary, but if you like spending
time on preparation by building layers of meaning and intention into your spells, you may
be assured that working this way is old and authentic and goes back a long way in time.

These "contained" forms of hoodoo spell casting
are often employed when you want to set up a powerful sweetening spell in a small place and
keep it working for as long as you wish. Spells worked in jars are extremely convenient
and one reason for their continued popularity is that although they can be
worked on an altar like other forms of
bottle spell, they can also be literally hidden in plain sight in a
kitchen cabinet.

By the mid 20th century, with packaged goods available in every grocery store,
the closed sugar jar, honey-jar, jam-jar, and pancake syrup bottle versions of these spells gradually
became more popular than the old cream-saucer, cored apple,
hollowed onion, and sugar box versions. The
spells given on this web page include a variety of old and new, with a focus on some the most
common bottle spell variations of this spell-family that
you will encounter these days, namely those that consist of filling a jar, box, bowl, or bottle
with a liquid or solid sweetener into which you place the personal concerns
of the person you want to influence, along with spiritually powerful
magical herbs, wrapped in a name-paper
or petition packet, on top of which you burn a
candle
that has been inscribed and then dressed with an appropriate
conjure oil. But always remember, this is
a FAMILY of spells, and there is no one "approved" way to do the work. I will teach you some
of my favourite ways and i will tell you why
i prefer them to some of the other ways in certain specific cases or under
certain specific practical conditions, but
keep in mind that this is a large family ... and not all of its members even know one another, so to speak.

This magic bottle spell can be worked on anyone's name
you want to sweeten. Depending on what relationship the person has to you,
what special items you put into the name-packet,
the colour of the candle you choose,
and the hoodoo oil you dress it with, this trick will cause the person you name to like you
more, to love you more, to favour your petition,
to want to help you, to be
sympathetic to your cause, or to forgive any wrongs you have committed.
It can be used to influence and sweeten a judge in a
court case,
a loan officer at the bank, a boss from whom
you want a raise, a teacher in your school from whom you want a good
grade, a lover with whom you want a reconciliation, an in-law who has been
back-biting you, or friend who has cut you off because of a foolish quarrel.

Get a small jar of sweetener. This can be honey, Karo
Syrup, Crystal Syrup, Dixie Syrup, home-made brown sugar syrup, Log Cabin
Syrup, Vermont maple syrup, Bre'r Rabbit Blackstrap Molasses, jam, jelly, or
whatever you desire or have on hand -- as long as it is in a container with
a metal lid. You can buy the goods in a quart or pint-size glass Mason
jar or pour the sweetening of your choice into a smaller jar of your
own at home. All that matters is that it should be a short,
squat jar with a metal lid, filled up to the shoulder of the
jar. I like to use small jars because i don't feel right wasting food; but if you are
using sugar and intend to cook with it later, go ahead and use the bigger size of jar.

In the old days, when skin colour was a lot more important
to people than it is now, it was recommended that the colour
of the sweetener match the skin of the person you wanted to
sweeten. Thus, for a white judge, you might use Crystal
Syrup, and for a Latino loan officer you might
use light brown sugar syrup, and for a dark-skinned lover you
might use Bre'r Rabbit Blackstrap Molasses. Frankly, these
days specifying a person's skin colour is not as meaningful as
it once was (for which we can all be thankful), and today
many folks prefer to use honey for the spell, no matter
what the target's skin colour is, because it is
a natural sweetener and not man-made. I believe that if you just
follow your own intuition and decide which sweetener you
like the best, you can be confident that you have made the right choice.
Just be sure that whatever you use is very sweet, for if you choose sweetened water and make it
too watery, your syrup may grow mold inside (ugh!) or it may ferment and your bottle may explode (ack!).

Next, prepare your paper. Again, in the old days, we would be
told to use white paper for a white person, tan paper for a high-brown, and
rough old grocery-bag paper for a person of dark colour, but
these days the type of paper you use can simply be a matter
of personal style. Manu people prefer the kind of
cream-coloured parchment paper that comes with the
Lucky Mojo hoodoo honey
jar mini spell kit shown above. I often use a smooth, tan-coloured light-weight
shopping bag paper because that is my choice, based on the
way i was taught, which was that such paper is "pure paper."
No matter which kind of paper i use, i prepare
my paper by tearing it neatly on all four sides so there is
no machine-cut edge. Of course some folks trim their paper square with scissors
-- and the spell still works for them. So go ahead and
prepare your paper just as you wish and that will suffice.

Once you have got your paper together, write the person's name three
times on it, one name under the other like so

John Russell Brown
John Russell Brown
John Russell Brown

Then rotate the paper 90 degrees clockwise and write your own name across the
person's name, also three times:

The result will be that the two names are crossed over each other, like
a cross or a tic-tac-toe grid, and the other person's name will be under yours. This is called
crossing and covering their name. If the sweetening is being done for love, you can use a
red ink pen. Otherwise, the colour of the ink does not matter, and you can just as easily use a pencil.

Now all around the crossed names, write your specific wish
in a circle. If you need a guideline, lightly sketch the
circle-shape with a pencil and then follow around it when writing with
your ink pen. You must write your wish in one continuous run of
script letters, with no spaces -- AND WITHOUT LIFTING YOUR PEN FROM
THE PAPER. Do not cross your t's or dot your i's. Just write
the words in one run and be sure to join up the end of the
last word with the beginning of the first word so the circle is complete. Then you can
go back and cross your t's and dot your i's. To make it easy
to connect the word together at the end, i have found it best to make my petition
in the form of short commands, such as "help me favour me
help me favour me" or "love me love me love me" or "forgive
me come back forgive me come back."

If you make a mistake -- for instance, if you lift your
pen in the middle of writing your petition-circle -- throw away
the paper and start it all over again. You want it to be perfect.

Other ingredients can be added to the name-paper if you wish -- a
piece of court case root for a court case spell, two rose
petals for a love spell, a
lump of sugar for a family member,
two clove buds for friendship, bayberry root or sassafras root
for a money spell,
a pair of Adam-and-Eve roots for love, two small
Lodestones for sexuality,
a pinch of deer's tongue leaves for
a proposal of marriage,
a square of camphor for cleaning out
bad things of the past, and so forth.

If you are sweetening someone for love, then in addition to
the name-paper and whatever optional herbs, roots, or minerals you choose,
you must also get one of the person's hairs and
one of your hairs. If the hairs are long enough, tie them
together. Otherwise, just lay them crosswise to each other.
In either case, place them on the name-paper. Don't ask me
what to do if you can't get their hairs 'cause i can't help
with that. Either work the spell without the hairs and
expect a much lower rate of success or get the hairs! Don't
load the paper up with lots of other stuff thinking that if
you can't get the hairs that six different love-herbs and
two lodestones will be as strong as two hairs. They won't be.

Fold the paper toward you to bring what you want your way
and speak aloud your wish as you do so.
Turn the paper and fold it again, and again, always
folding toward you, to bring what you want your way. Speak aloud your
wish each time you fold the paper toward you. Fold it until it will not fold any more.

Open the jar of sugar, honey, jam, or syrup. To make room for the folded paper
packet, you will need to eat some of the contents. Take out a
spoon's worth, and as you eat it, say, "As this honey [or syrup or sugar] is
sweet to me, so will i become sweet to John Russell Brown [or the name
of the person you are working this on]."

Alternatively, if someone is not
acting as sweetly to you as you think he should, you can say,
"As this honey [or syrup or sugar] is
sweet to me, so will John Russell Brown [or the name
of the person you are working this on] be sweet to me."

If the petition is for a case in which you want a favour, you can
specify the type of sweetness. For instance, in a legal matter that will
go before a judge for a final decision, you can say,
"As this honey [or syrup or sugar] is
sweet to me, so will Judge Fogarty [or the name
of the judge in your case] be sweet to me and favour me above all others."

You can do this three times -- taking out three small spoonsful of
sweetener and speaking your wish aloud each time. Push the folded paper
packet down into the jar and close up the lid.

Stand the candle
on the lid of the closed-up jar and light it. You can melt the candle to the lid with hot
wax if need be.

Let the candle burn all the way out.
Do this every Monday, Wednesday,
and Friday, for as long as it takes. Add each new
candle on top of the remains of the last one.
I have seen people's syrup-jar
bottle spells like this done for court cases that were continued for so long
and required so many candles
that you could not see the jar under all
the dripped-on wax!

In December 2003, a person posting from Italy
inquired in Usenet about a bottle spell that was found in a
recently vacated apartment:

Hi,

I'm ignorant concerning jinxes and other types of spells.
So i describe you what happened to me.
I found a leaflet conserved in a jar full of honey,
in a flat previously occupied by a Dominican girl.
The leaflet says:

I apologize for the untranslated Spanish (I
don't understand Spanish) and for the probable
errors of words (some words are not clear).
I thank in advance everybody can give me the
meaning of this leaflet and, in the case of jinx,
the way to rid of this.

Thanks,

andrea. (andrea_gazze at yahoo.it)

Andrea made no mention of finding candle
wax on the honey jar, so it is
likely that writing out the names and the petition and placing them in the
honey jar constituted the
entirety of this particular magical bottle spell. I replied to Andrea's
questions as best i could, given that my Spanish is not too good:

I think some of the Spanish words may be spelled wrong, so i am a little
unclear on what is intended, but it is a honey jar spell, a type of
spell usually used to sweeten people -- that is, to make them ameliorate
their hostility, or treat one better, or even to love one.

Another poster, familiar with Dominican Spanish dialect, clarified the wording of
this honey jar bottle spell in a subsequent Usenet post:

Good job, but let me add to it. The Spanish is phonetic and nearly
illiterate. Note that some unlettered Dominicans aspirate their S or
drop it, and interchange R and L, final R of infinitive dropped
completely. Sloppy speech, like a Midwesterner "gonna" instead of "going
to." Hence:

"that everybody named should chill
and have to calm down his/her anger
against me and my partner"

Regards,

--M (mephistopheles132002NOSPAM at yahoo.com)

I want to thank Andrea for bringing this Dominican variant of the
honey jar bottle spell to my attention and Mephistopheles13 for
making it understandable. What it demonstrates is that
honey jar spells are adaptable to many magical desires, are a feature of Afro-Caribbean culture,
can be worked in a number of ways, and are widely popular all around the world.

Because there are no down-home or old timey
hoodoo spells for getting HUD, HUD-VASH,
or Section 8 Housing (because it din't even exist back in the day), some modern workers
will advise clients to treat these subsidised housing cases the
same as for anyone who is wanting to move in to a new apartment or house. However, there is an
additional issue with such cases, namely the
bureaucracy and red tape associated with governmental assistance -- and we do have a
hoodoo heritage of spells for
breaking through governmental and bureaucratic logjams. So let us put the two ways of
working together and come up with a spell for unlocking your Section 8 Housing. In doing this work, you will call upon
God's help and ask for compassion from specific people, in an attempt to get someone at the housing agency
to act on your behalf.

An adaptation of a classic Southern sweetening trick, this is a sugar jar or sugar box spell with a house key in it, to get
you housing assistance. Here's how to make one:

Write your case worker's name on an image of the HUD logo (from their web site) or, better yet,
on the case worker's business card,
and place it in the bottom of a sugar bowl, a one-pint Mason jar, or one-pound sugar box. Into your sugar, mix a small amount of
Cinnamon powder
(for money and for "heat" on the agency), Allspice powder (for money), Cloves powder (for friendship and for money),
and powdered Five Finger Grass (for the granting of favours).

There should only be enough powder in the sugar to
lightly speckle it -- not to discolour it, because you will be cooking with it and eating it.

Get a house key (any key -- i prefer the old-fashioned skeleton key type, but key will do.

Pour the doctored sugar into the jar or box, on top of the agency or case-worker's name. Then insert the key into the sugar, as you would
stick a key into a lock in a door. Turn the key, as if you were opening the locked door. As you do this, say Psalms 23.
Do this three times per day (all at once or spaced out during the day, for instance at 6:00 AM, Noon, and 6:00 PM).
Here is the Psalm, and you don't need to memorize it - you can read it right out of your Bible or
print out this web page, if you prefer.

PSALM 23
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul.
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil for thou art with me.
Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.
Thou anointest my head with oil.
My cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
Amen.

Every day, at least once, taste some of the sugar or flavour your coffee or tea with it, or cook with some
of this sugar, saying, "As this sugar is sweet to me, so will [Name] (or [the HUD agency]) be sweet to me and
favour my case above all others, coming to my assistance with care, concern, and alacrity" and then call the
case-worker's name and recite the Golden Rule from Luke 6:31

LUKE 6:31
And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.
Amen.

As the sugar is taken out, replace it occasionally with new doctored sugar. Keep this going until you are
approved for HUD housing.

When you are approved, use all the sugar to bake a cake or a batch of cookies and distribute the sweet treats to
anyone who also needs financial assistance of some kind.

Dispose of the petition paper by carrying it to your new home and burying it in the ground or in a
potted plant there, with thanks.

This spell is simplicity itself. I was taught it by one of my black girlfriends, back in
the 1950s in Berkeley, California. It is a schoolgirl's spell to get a friend to like you, but, of course, it can
be used in other ways, for love and dating, or to make a teacher like you.

I will tell it as i learned it. The packaging of this gum has changed since then; you're on your own
if you need to make changes to the spell because of that.

Buy a package of Juicy Fruit Gum. It is the sweetest gum. Each package has five sticks in it.
Each stick is wrapped in its own paper sleeve plus a paper-backed aluminum foil. Take the
middle stick out of the package and set it aside. Carefully slide the other four sticks of gum
off their papers and unwrap them. Write the name of the person whom you are sweetening
on the inside of each paper. Reassemble them carefully. The fifth stick you do not mess with,
just cover it with kisses. Put all of the wrapped sticks back in the package. Remember to put the
kissed one in the center

When you see the person, offer them a stick of gum. If they accept, make sure you give
them the stick you kissed, not one of the four with their name inside. While they
open and chew their stick, You take one of the named ones
and chew it -- but do NOT chew it so long that the sweetness goes away. Take it out of
your mouth and wrap it in the name paper so they cannot see the name. Keep it in your
pocket or your purse.

As you find an opportunity, unwrap the paper and stick the wad of gum
under their desk. If you share a home-room class, that is the best.
You still have three more sticks of gum. Chew them too, the same way -- just enough
to enjoy them, but NOT so long that the sweetness goes away. Wrap each one up in its name-paper
until you stick it somewhere. If you have several class-periods with them, stick the gum under their desk in
as many classes as you can. If you can't stick
a wad under their desk, stick it on the floor to the bathroom that they use so they step over it.
If you are afraid of getting caught chewing gum in school, chew it home at night and wrap the little balls up
in the name-papers so that the next day you can take them to school.

This spell is a bit different because the sweet portion moves from being contained to
being uncontained, and it also involves chewing and swallowing. In
this way of working, it resembles the kinds of sweetening spells in which
you take some of the sugar, jam, syrup, or honey
from a sweet bowl or jar and use it in cooking. But the end result -- marking the territory
for friendship -- comes from a different spell family --
tricks that are laid out, set out, or deployed for contact.

Many women who are faced with a situation where their baby's father
will not pay child support try to hurt the man, or rule him, or control
him, but there is a better way, and that is to cause him to WANT to pay
what the law says he must pay -- and to love his baby while he pays, as well.

To work the sweet side of a case like this, you can make a honey jar bottle spell on the mama,
the baby and the daddy -- all of them in one honey jar. Try to get something
personal from each individual
-- a hair, for instance. If the daddy is estranged or lives far away, his
hair may be hard to capture, but do try to get it -- and if that won't be
possible, then get his handwriting, or something he touched, like
maybe a fiber from a stuffed animal that he gave to the child.

Put the personal items in a name paper with the mama and the daddy names
written 9 times each, side by side in two columns (because they are no
longer a couple) and the baby name crossed over both, holding them all together.
Then, around and around the names write: "We are family, forever and in all ways,
and let no one put this family asunder."

Next, in the corners of the paper, draw four eye-shapes, but just the outlines
with no eye-lashes or iris and pupil in the centers. Now, inside each eye-shape,
draw a heart (one heart in each eye-shape) and inside each heart, write a dollar
sign. Then, using the eye-shapes as a guide, write, in very tiny letters, like
the eye-lashes of the eyes, top and bottom, the words "PAY CHILD" (on the top line)
and "SUPPORT" (on the bottom). If you do it neatly, it'll look like an eye is
in each corner with a heart for the iris of each eye and a dollar sign for the
pupil of each eyeball, and the words "PAY CHILD SUPPORT" as the eyelashes of each eye.
The meaning of this symbol in each corner is GOD IS WATCHING YOU (the eye shape) --
SO LOVE THE CHILD (the heart) AND PAY THE MONEY (the dollar sign).

After you have prepared the paper, dress it with Pay MeSachet Powder
and put it in a honey jar as explained above. Use a
green candle for money
or a pink one for the father to care more for the child, and dress it with
Pay MeOil.

This is an old-fashioned sugar spell to bring peace to a family in which two siblings are being
kept apart by the quarrelsome spouse of one sibling, who will not allow family members into
the house, thus isolating that sibling from the family.

No matter how many people are involved, this spell should be crafted with at least two generations
of family member pictures and names, including both living and dead, as explained below.

Print out pictures of all family members about the same size and at the bottom of each picture,
write the person's full name and birthdate, if known. These pictures should be no more than 3
inches square, printed on 4 inch square paper.

If you are missing a picture for any family member, then write the missing person's name and
birthdate, if known, on a square of paper the same size as the pictures.

You will now literally sew or stitch the siblings together into a little booklet. Use white thread
for peace and/or red thread for blood ties. Work slowly and leave the stitches a bit on the loose side, as
there will be other pages interleaved into the booklet, as described below.

With each stitch, call the person's names and state their relationship to
one another.

Include the parents as the covers for the little booklet, for this is the book
of THEIR children, the siblings.

Next, get photos of the children of those siblings, if any.(This would be the third generation.)
Stitch the children to the pictures of the
siblings, as fold-out pages in the booklet, because these children are the offspring of the siblings.
These can be group pictures or individual pictures, connected in a row from oldest to youngest.
If any of the siblings has no children, skip this step for that sibling only.

Then, get photos of the spouses of the siblings and stitch them to the far end of the fold-outs of the children,
as they are the "other half" of each sibling's group of children -- and they will fold in as a gate-fold.
If any sibling has a spouse but no children, stich the sibling's spouse directly to the sibling.
If any sibling has no spouse, skip this step for that sibling only.

Additionally, if any of the children of the siblings have children (this would be the 4th
generation), stitch their children, followed by their spouses, to their
pictures as you did above, but array them going downward instead of side-to-side. Fold those pictures inward as well.

Remember to call each name and bless each person as you stitch the booklet together.

Now get a jar, bowl, or box for sugar, one with a lid. I think that one of these square ribbed
refrigerator containers is perfect in size and shape:

Lay down a layer of sugar. Place the booklet into the jar and sprinkle sugar between all the pages
and fold-outs. Finish by completely covering the booklet with a layer of sugar.

Burn candles on the container for at least three days, to trick the sugar, then open the lid and
remove some of the sugar. Use the sugar to bake cookies for the isolated family member to bring as a gift.
If at all possible, these cookies should be made according to a beloved family recipe known
to the brother -- that is, a recipe his mother made.

Replace the sugar you removed from the container with fresh sugar, pray for peace, and light another candle on top of the container while you bake the cookies.

Have the friend show up at the brother's home with the gift of cookies. If the friend is not allowed in the house, have her leave the cookies as a gift. I recommend against making cakes or pies in this spell because they are large and unitary and may be refused on the grounds of being ""too much." A few small cookies are generally more easy to present as a gift, especially if obviously home-made according to a cherished family recipe.

If this does not succeed the first time, do it again, repeatedly, always using sugar from the container. Eventually the combination of candle magic and tricked-sugar cookie gifts will sweeten the situation.

People who come to conjure through the internet often have no traditional or
family background of working with sugar or honey spells, and they often come up
with questions about how to do the work that seem, as far as i can see, to be
based on ideas unconnected to African American folk magic. Because these
questions are asked repeatedly at the
Lucky Mojo Forum, i am posting some replies here,
in order to be able to point readers here:

You do not "have to" burn a
candle on a honey or sugar jar. This is a bogus issue.

Let's look at history: Candles are a fairly recent invention.
Prior to candles, people made oil lamps. They also made sweet jars --
but i can find no record that they set oil lamps on top of sweet jars. Just too awkward, i guess.

The invention of candles has given rise to a whole class of magic called, naturally,
candle magic.
Candle magic is popular, and over the
years the burning of candles has become
synthesized with other forms of magic. Thus we now see people burning
candles while performing
rituals of
bathing, altar work with
lodestones,
or burning and manipulating
figural candles as a form of doll-baby magic.

Candles are adaptable, and in one form
or another, they can fit into many classes of magical practice which did not originally include them.
The addition of candles to these spells,
however, does not make them candle-spells
per se, and the spells can still be worked without the use of candles.

Here's an example of an old Spiritualist candle spell to draw someone to you:

Dress and pray over a white candle
named for someone you love, and they will come to you.

Simple, clean, effective -- and the only tools you need are the
candle and the
dressing oil.

Oh, yes, and a candle stand. And therein lies a world of embellishment: You need a candle stand.

The candle stand can be a traditional candlestick, as shown here. If you want to, and if the candlestick
is hollow at the base, you can write your petition on a sugar packet (yes, a regular
sugar packet like you would get in a restaurant) and tape it up inside the candle stand.
Dress the candle with appropriate spiritual dressing oils and you are good to go.

But let's take this idea a bit further. You may not have a brass candlestick --
and it just so happens that candles are easy to melt onto a chinaware plate to burn. The plate catches the wax drippings,
making it a convenient and easily cleaned candle stand.

In the Spiritualist Church, white chinaware, clear glass, white cloths, and white candles are often
used as symbols of Spirit. So, in the Spiritual Church, we find people practicing a version of the
old white candle drawing spell that, by the addition of a sweetener, has been amplified into
sweetening spell.

In this candle spell, the sweetener -- honey, granulated sugar, powdered sugar, sorghum syrup,
or molasses -- is poured or sprinkled in a thin ring around a white candle which has been melted
to the white plate candle stand. The candle may have been previously loaded with personal concerns
of the person whom the work is intended to affect -- a hair will suffice. When the candle is done
burning, the plate is ceremonially washed clean.

This spell -- a ring of molasses on a white plate with a white candle in the center -- is a nice,
old, 19th century way of performing a sweetening spell. The honey jar is not central to the work.
In fact, there is no honey jar, just a candle standing in a ring of sweetener.

So in that version of the spell, the candle is the leading principle of the work and the honey follows.

Now you can see that the candle-on-a-honey-jar form of the spell is a hybrid, that is, is
combination of two forms of magic. So let's approach it from the other direction -- from the
sweetener side.

Looking back in time, we see many sweetening spells in which there never was -- and still never is
-- a candle included in the work.

For instance, we have the sugar bowl. Nobody burns a candle on their sugar bowl, because it's, you
know, the lidded bowl that sits on the table that you keep the sugar in for coffee or tea. Instead, you hide
a fingernail down in the bottom of the sugar container or tape it to the bottom of the sugar
jar with a petition, and you let folks serve their sugar right out
of it to sweeten their own coffee or tea. No candle there, and there never will be a candle there.

Then we have the spell family in which a plant is set to growing out of sugared or honeyed red
onions or red apples buried in soil. No candles there -- the living plant spreads the spell abroad
and grows from the petition paper and personal concerns buried within the soil. Again, no candle.

So, looking at this type of work strictly from the sweetening side, candles are optional additions:
We start with a sweetener, and we get something personal of the person, and we bury it in our chosen sweet
substance.

When i was young, i was not taught to use tea lights on a sugar or honey jar. I was taught to either use no candle at
all or to burn a free-standing candle. That was the way the folks who taught me worked back in the 1960s.
One reason for this is that tea lights
were not something everybody had back then -- they were only used, as their name implies,
for keeping tea warm or under fondue pots. Not too many of my friends were that high-toned,
and tea lights had not made the move to short-term "mood lighting" that they now enjoy.
In those days, household candles, dinner tapers, and birthday candles were much more common
and you could buy them in the dime store or in a candle shop. And in the candle shops
you could also buy figural candles, especially designed for use in magical works. I wouldn't even have known where
to find a tea light back then, honestly.

Nowadays tea lights, glass-encased votive candles, and tall glass-encased vigil lights are
much more common than they were in my younger days -- but i still don't use them myself
-- and here is why: If you use contained candles on sugar, jam, or honey jars,
you will soon learn that the wax is in its own container. Your working will not
embrace your sweet jar with melted wax for the purpose of
candle wax divination.
In other words, you will be doing the work, but you won't see the measure of your success.

Because i personally am gifted to use ceromancy -- wax divination -- as a check on my
work, i prefer the drippy, free-standing candles, but that's just me. If reading wax is not important to
you, this will not be an issue for you. I was taught to use the
6" household candles that come in various colours, and they are most excellent for reading, but
if you want a small, quick-burning light, try a 4" altar light instead. It will burn for
about an hour, and if you need to extinguish it and to burn it in sections,
you can lick your fingers and pinch out the flame, a procedure that old-timers always
recommend because it does not "kill" the spell like blowing out the flame does, but
rather keeps it "on hold" until you come back and relight the wick.

Vigil lights (8-inch tall glass encased candles) are not recommended for use on sugar or
honey jars for another reason, one that has more to do with physics than with magic:
They do not embrace the jar with wax, and they are also simply too tall, heavy, and unstable
to balance safely on top of a small jar. If they get knocked over, you may have a
major fire on hand.

However, if you are working your sweetening job according to one of the old-fashioned
open or non-container methods -- say, a ring of raspberry jam mixed with your menstrual blood on a white
plate to draw sexual relations -- then putting a vigil light at the center of that ring makes perfect sense -- and when
you are finished, you can remove the vigil light, put fresh flowers in the glass
container, and you will have clean jam with no wax in it that you can carefully wash off the
plate and use in the preparation of a magical recipe for food
or add to a hoodoo spiritual bath.

A frequent point of confusion about sweetening work is the necessity of something to connect the work
to the person you are trying to sweeten.
Of course it is traditional to use some sort of magical link to the person you are working on --
but what it is, and how "personal" a personal concern it should be, are matters that
can trouble the minds of those unfamiliar with this work.

"Can i make a honey or sugar jar for love if i don't have anything personal of my target?"

Sadly, this is often a
pathetic plea for love-influence over someone you really don't know well or
with whom you have very little contact or intimacy.

Do it, but expect to get results
in proportion to the intimacy of the item that represents the person. In other words,
if you are woking for love and marriage, you will want something intimate to signify
the desired intimacy of the relationship. Sexual fluids, nail clippings, and hairs are the items
most often employed.

If we have nothing of the person's body -- that is, no hair, no
sexual fluids, finger nails, skin-scrapings,
or sweat -- we ask ourselves what next-best item we can use to create a spiritual link with them
and thus affect them as we work.

"But what if it's a just a judge or a boss i want to sweeten -- do i really need to get his pubic hair?

Good question.

When it comes to a business or legal case,
we really do not need to get all intimate on the person we are trying to sweeten.
A piece of their writing is fine. Their signature is, of
course, the central expression of their self in their writing, so a signature is always good to use.
Failing that, a photo or a business card may provide a good form of contact.
Just their name written on paper will also do.

"Do i cut or tear their signature off the paper -- or should use the whole page of paper?"

This is a non-starter of a question. You are making a honey or sugar jar,
not entombing manuscripts or file folders of correspondence in honey!

Your objective is to capture a piece of that person's spiritual essence, not to build a giant
leak-proof vault filled with everything the guy ever wrote and then pour a tanker truck load of
honey into it.

Conjure is not a role-playing game. There are traditions, and while it is true that a few very firm rules
are embedded in those traditions, for the most part the spell work is performed through contact
with spirit, not through the exercise of rules. By failing to understand the tradition, and looking for
rules as a condition of success or failure, folks can lose track of the point of the work.

A little smear of jam on a name, and the name wrapped in tin foil has won many a case. I
have seen it happen.

First,
Essence of Bend Over Oil
and all the rest are coercive forumlas.
They are not formulas used for sweetening, for harmonious pleasure, for reconciliation,
for peaceful conjugation, or for forgiveness.
They are used to dominate and over-ride another person. Therefore, their very nature conflicts with the
intention of a sugar jar, jelly jar, sugar packet, or honey jar.

Because a coercive conjure oil doesn't really
have the same sort of intention as a sugar bowl, sweet jar, sugar box, honey jar, or
honey-apple container spell, i suggest that you would be better
advised to consider using an
Influence Honey Jar Spell Kit.

Remember, hoodoo conjure oils
are used to anoint
candles -- and as you learned
above, a candle magic spell is not even
a necessary component of a sweetening spell. I mean,
candles are great, and their
power can add some push to a sugar spell, but the real reason to bring
conjure oils into a sweetening spell
would be to dress the petition paper or to dress the
candles.

Furthermore, depending on which
essential oils and which
magic herbs are used in making a given
dressing oil,
the resultant mixture may be toxic or poisonous to eat -- but the honey or sugar is supposed to be
TASTED while you make the spell; in fact, eating some of the honey is part and parcel
of the work ("As honey is sweet to me, so will So-And-So be sweet to me" et cetera).

Also, since many people take out and use the jam, jelly, sugar, syrup, or honey from the jar or bottle to prepare
magical foods
for their loved ones as part of their spell casting, contaminating the honey or
sugar with potentially toxic
essential oils
is counter to their magical interests.

After i stopped keeping bees, i continued to provide spells that listed all of the
above sweeteners, and i also made a choice to support my local bee keepers in a time
of economic crisis by carrying small honey jars in my shop. I chose the small hexagonal jars
rather than the big old quart size jars because i hate seeing food wasted --
you only need a little jar of any sweetener --
but i did not invent this way of working, nor its use in African American magical
culture. And i myself also use and prescribe loose sugar and sugar cubes as well,
where i think they will be more effective and easier to use -- for instance, in the home-sweetening work
at the dinner table of a family that keeps a sugar bowl out for sugaring coffee.

Folks, this little exercise in haterism is not good cultural history, not an accurate
description of my work or my teaching, and not good
magic. It also is just not very convincing. It looks like an angry cry for attention and
subservience from an unnamed and unknown Authority Figure.

God bless such people and their angry minds. May they find peace and sweetness in their own sugar bowls.

Easily accessible to the beginning or newbie practitioner of
Southern style conjure
and filled with valuable introductory information about the true
African American hoodoo heritage
of sweetening spells, this practical guide to folk magic contains many tips and tricks that
even the most experienced worker will find of value. There is no book quite like it
anywhere, so if you found this page of help or interest, you will be very pleased
to have the one book that contains detailed and practical information on --

The History of Hoodoo Sweetening Spells

The Right Sweetener For Every Purpose

How to Fix a Sugar Bowl for Love or Influence

How to Make Your Own Sweet Baths and Sugar Scrubs

Recipes for Edible Sweet Conjure Cookery

How to Choose the Proper Herbs and Spiritual Supplies

How to Prepare Honey Jars with Candles and Oils

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Sweet Spells

Deacon Millett of Four Altars Gospel Sanctuary presents full, complete, and
authentic instructions on every kind of sugar, honey, apple, onion, molasses, and syrup spell you
can imagine. Deacon Millett is a Reconciliation and Love Spell specialist, and the incredible opening
section is filled with the Deacon's recipes for making your own sugar scrubs, sweet bowl spells, and
honey baths! Plus, he has selected recipes from his friends and colleagues (myself included), showing
their own unique ways of working, and he also has included his own
extensive "Frequently Asked Questions" section, gleaned from
the pages of the Lucky Mojo Forum
-- with incredible answers provided by our intrepid moderators and members
of the Association of Independent Readers and Rootworkers.
The information you have always wanted is now available in one
easy-to-read compendium.

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